Nate Silver Must Be Fired From Statistics

Welllll Mr. Fancy Baseball and Politics Man knows nothing about the Oscars, apparently! He thought that Taraji Henson would win Best Supporting Actress and Mickey Rourke would win Best Actor. Silver’s calculations excluded several important factors, including: 1) Penelope Cruz is very hot and 2) Sean Penn starred in a feel-good Issues Movie that concerns an issue that many people in Hollywood care about. Nate Silver must be publicly shamed, his statistics license revoked, and his $700,000 book advance donated to a math academy of his choice. [New York Magazine,OSCAR.com]

Ha! Proof that Obama engaged in voter fraud to win the presidency! Someone subpoena the president of ACORN.

tehbenton

Right or wrong, the man makes all of my gay geek no-no places tingle.

And I have a lot of them.

A LOT.

Cape Clod

He was hedging about the supporting actress Oscar on Olberman. His ‘maths’ and ‘numbers’ told him to pick Taraji Henson, but you could tell he wasn’t willing to bet the farm against Penelope Cruz.
Rourke would have won if he hadn’t shown up at the awards looking like David Carradine’s coke dealer.

shanemacgowan

Wouldn’t the voting block interested in issue #2 be uninterested in #1.

Rourke didn’t win because the academy realized that by portraying a burned out loser he actually didn’t have to do any acting.

Mahousu

Not to be too critical, but this post would have been improved with a different picture. Something like this, perhaps.

WadISay

Is it just me, or has Nate gotten more scary and oracular lately? He was on Maddow about a week ago, and he looked lit from beneath, with incense burning on either side and opening his eyes only to speak.

4tehlulz

[re=249145]Giant Robot[/re]: It’s funny because it’s true.

OReillysVibrator

In Nate’s defense, Nate’s simulations accurately took into account that the Academy would give Best Actor to a movie that thoroughly involved latent and patent homo-eroticism, and gave a slight edge to The Wrestler.

MysteriousTraveller

I think Nate only makes love to spreadsheets and his bong.

wheelie

Silver was in good company – just about every dang pundit I read was declaring . . um . . Mickey Rooney (?) the winner. I’m glad they were all wrong. Sean Penn was terrific. Justice for my people!

Mr Blifil

He obviously sampled the wrong Jews.

frumious_bandersnatch

Well, if he is emotionally crushed by this, I personally vote that two uberhot twinks and a pitcher of margaritas be immediately provided to assuage him. I would appreciate video.

Also: Nate Silver did not actually take any surveys of the actual Academy voters, and therefore sucks.

Giant Robot

[re=249137]Bruno[/re]: The only godly way to use math is to figure out the Barack Hussei Nobama = 666

SayItWithWookies

So a reasonable grasp of random statistics isn’t sufficient to predict the behavior of a secretive and capricious cabal of industry executives? I guess I may as well toss these elaborate calculations that show the Burmese junta will be cornering the tungsten market and invading Malaysia. Crap.

jagorev

Well, now that he has gotten something wrong, every prediction he has ever made has been retroactively discredited, and NOOBAMA is no longer our President. Hurray! Let us do to Nate what we do to all failed statisticians (ritual disembowelment).

[re=249144]ericblair[/re]: I dunno. Are you attractive to gay men but not to hetrosexual women?

Mr Blifil

I was interested in seeing Milk, as I have liked plenty of stuff that Sean Penn has done, most notably his stage performance a while back in David Rabe’s Hurlyburly (the film performance was a major disappointment).

But then I saw the clip where he plays a scene on the grand staircase in SF city hall, or wherever, and proceeds to mince around like a figure out of a Sean Delonas cartoon. Now I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just take a pass, since Harvey Milk is an actual important figure in American history, and I might start getting mad at Mr. Van Zandt, for attempting to simultaneously honor/appropriate the Milk legacy. Meh, I’ll probably end up seeing it anyway.

[re=249182]Mustang[/re]: I can confirm that Nate appeals to The Women (not the PUMAs though, their statistasexual object of desire must be James Carville or someone). Although the mix of Penelope Cruz vs Nate lust here is quite a contrast indeed.

Fivetree

I can honestly say that I went 6 for 6 against Natey-poo on the categories he predicted. The Winslet, Ledger and “Slumdog” wins were slam dunks. That leaves the two he missed (and that I got right). Yes, the “hottitude” factor is relevant and party explains Penelope Cruz winning, add to that the fact that this award is usually where they honor comedic performances. Then there’s the Sean Penn win. Let’s face it, Mickey Rourke has been a burnout throughout most of his career in Hollywood. You have to be totally fucking brilliant to win one of those tschotckes if you have the added burden of being an asshole working against you. Technical people get to vote on these awards and they don’t like waiting around for actors to show up, sober up, remember their lines or what have you. Remember this in future years when you are wondering why Christian Bale has never won an Oscar. He could turn the phone book into Hamlet squared and he will never get an Oscar. Because he reamed out a cameraman. End of story. Back to politics, Nate.

Plus liberal Hollywood feels guilty about Prop 8 so they had to show a little love to “Milk” and this is where they did it (along with giving that award to that CUTE Lance guy).

DustBowlBlues

What Nate didn’t calculate (and why I won the family’s glam oscar party vote on this category) was the fact Mickey Rourke won the Golden Globe and, therefore, could not win the Oscar:

The Globes put Mr Creepy on the interview-and-talk-show-circuit and gave him lots of chances to remind the Academy voters why they didn’t like him in the first place. A monkey could have recognized that “Mr. Comeback” would throw it all away again, fast as he could. Plus, while Prop 8 rage scorched Hollywood, he was using slang like f*g.

I’ll probably rent the movie because I like Darren Aronofsky. (I even rented “The Fountain.”)

Nate obviously doesn’t read EW.

Mustang

[re=249248]tiny mexican[/re]: Hey! I’m a girl. Admittedly, I like to channel surf, and I hate to shop, but I’m a girl. I don’t see the Nate Silver thing. I’m more attracted to slobby guys who eat whole bags of chips with dip and act goofy. Thats’ probably not a good thing, though.

DustBowlBlues

[re=249168]InsidiousTuna[/re]: Wall-E only won the lame Best Animation but should have won everything–plus actor and actress. They are just so cuuuuute. I love Wall-E and EV-A. My favorite critic, Lisa Schwarzbaum, made it her number one movie of 2008. Definitely best love story–and best acceptance speech was the producer explaining how Hello Dolly became a featured part of the movie.

Links

Oscars are only the most predictable awards in the entire universe. Why would anyone need to use statistics to predict the results? The only category where there was uncertainty was the best actor category this year. It turns out, the one thing Holywood likes more than a comeback story is a timely teh gays movie.

QuestionEvil

What Nate failed to take into account is that the Golden Globes and many of the other awards are voted upon by people outside the industry. Mickey Rourke has been a complete A-Hole to everybody for the past twenty years. No mater how good your performance may be if you piss in the porridge of the people voting on the awards you’re likely to walk away with little more then a dead dog and a strangely Gary Oldmanesque new look.

Also he even said Best Supporting Actress was a pure tossup, he just hedged his bets on Taraji over Penelope.

hobospacejungle

[re=249284]Fivetree[/re]: along with giving that award to that CUTE Lance guy

What? I though that was Crispin Glover. I was wondering what he was doing at the Oscars.

tiny mexican

[re=249301]Mustang[/re]: Shrimpy dweebs out of Central Casting for some, Kevin James for others. That’s America.